LJ Idol: Sometimes Being Right Isn
Far more often than most people care to admit, being right isn’t what it cracked up to be. Far more often than people will admit, being right ends up getting you hurt. I know that being right has lost me friends in the past, even though it’s been clear that I was right. Is being right worth it? Not always. Being right, whether you admit it or not weighs quite heavily on your mind.
Once such case is that I knew that a friend of mine was in a bad relationship. There were so many warning signs there that everyone else could see. She never saw them until several years later. She spent four years in this relationship, with a man who systematically pushed each and every one of her friends away. He let her believe that it was for the best, that her friends were jealous of him and didn’t care about her. He systematically plucked away her self esteem, told her that she was nothing more than a piece of property to be owned and used at his whim. He systematically took away every bit of who she was and left an empty shell of the best friend I knew and loved. I saw this happening, I warned her of it. She told me that I was just jealous, that I didn’t understand their relationship. Eventually she quit talking to me, we parted ways for several years. Our friendship never really recovered from it. We still talk, but nowhere near as much as we did in the beginning.
I’ve had this exact scenario happen with more than one friend. Other cases, the friendship never rekindled after the break-up occurred, Some cases, the person ended up vanishing from my life without another word. Was I better off being right? I don’t know. I know that everything happens for a reason, but is losing the closeness of a best friend worth it?
I think that being right, while it can be a good thing, isn’t the best thing in most cases. Perhaps we should pick the truths we tell. But then we jeopardize our integrity. I really have no more to say about that.
